The American occupation of the country of Iraq ended
in December 2011.
Without American soldiers, there is likely to be increased sectarian
killing.
There was no way to end our occupation without more people dying. But continuing the occupation
would not have prevented deaths either.
We were entirely wrong to overthrow the government
of Iraq in 2003,
no matter how corrupt and evil the regime of Saddam Hussein was.
At least he was able to maintain more law and order
than we were able to achieve with thousand of American troops.
This use of the military forces of the United States
of America
was one of the most serious mistakes of recent history.
And something should be done to prevent repeating such
tragedies. See Lessons
from
Iraq.
OUTLINE:
1. PART OF THE PROBLEM OR PART OF THE SOLUTION?
2. MUTUAL GENOCIDE WILL INCREASE BEFORE IT DECREASES
3. NOT WANTING TO MAKE MATTERS WORSE
4.
PRIVATE ARMIES CLASH BY NIGHT
5.
IRAQ WILL DIVIDE BEFORE IT RE-UNITES
6.
CONCLUSION
IRAQ
AFTER OCCUPATION
by James Leonard Park
1. PART OF THE PROBLEM OR PART OF THE SOLUTION?
Soldiers employed by the taxpayers of the USA
occupied the country of Iraq from 2003 to 2011—eight
years.
Our original reasons for overthrowing the government of Iraq
and disbanding all its military forces were pure fabrication
of the small group of men who originally started the war.
The period of classic warfare was rather brief:
The military forces of Iraq were no match against the foreign invaders.
There followed a long period of occupation. See Policing
Mutual
Genocide: Not a War on Terrorism, Not a Civil War
U.S. military forces attempted to maintain law and
order
while the people of Iraq were supposed to be resolving their
differences.
But almost no progress has been made on any of the
benchmarks
established for measuring progress toward a new civil order in Iraq.
And the basic reason for the lack of progress
is that the people of Iraq do not favor any such changes.
The U.S. soldiers stayed in place for several years.
And the people of Iraq became accustomed
to this occupation.
They mostly waited
for the end of the occupation
to see what new order might emerge
once the American troops were finally gone.
To what sense was our continuing occupation a
solution for Iraq?
Without U.S. presence, would Iraqis have killed one another even more
often?
How would we measure any such claimed benefit?
It could be argued that our continuing presence
was just making it safer for various factions to re-group and re-arm
for the fight they plan to undertake once the occupying forces are
withdrawn.
One hope behind the occupation was that reducing
violence
would allow the political forces to come to some reasonable
reconciliation
so that Iraq could establish some new kind of law-and-order after
Saddam.
But our sponsorship of the replacement Iraqi government
made every member of that government suspect.
This is very similar to the suspicion against any
person
who was once a part of the government of Iraq under Saddam Hussein.
They were all members of his political party, the Baathists.
And one of the rules of the new political order established by the U.S.
military
was that no former Baathist could be a part of any government agency.
This was called "de-Baathification".
After our occupation is over, will there be a
similar
'de-Americanization'?
Will Iraqi leaders who served under U.S. occupation
have to leave the country when the U.S. troops are gone?
Some will decide to stay for personal or family reasons.
Will they be permitted to take part in the new Iraq
that will emerge after occupation?
They might be too tainted by their association with the American
oppressors
to be giving any trust under the post-occupation order.
At least this will be the first new order to emerge.
Perhaps after a few years, some of the collaborators with the U.S.
occupation
will be trusted again with some power in the new
government of Iraq.
This is also parallel to the end of the de-Baathification purge.
Some civil servants who served under Saddam Hussein
were later allowed to take roles in the occupation government.
People who are old enough to know about the Nazi
occupation of France
during the Second World War will be able to see another analogy.
Thousands of French citizens were selected by the Nazi occupiers
to keep the wheels of government turning in those parts of France
that were under the military control of the Nazis.
After the Nazi occupation was ended when France was liberated,
these collaborators were killed or imprisoned
because they had cooperated with the hated Nazi occupiers.
They could not be trusted by the French people
because they were seen as traitors.
Here is a hypothetical example,
which might help us to understand the feelings of the people of Iraq:
Imagine that the state of New York was taken over
by Arabic-speaking troops from some foreign country.
These foreign soldiers would take over
all functions of government and all functions of the police.
But they would need some New Yorkers to translate their orders
and to carry out some of the routine functions of government.
Some New Yorkers would cooperate more than others with the occupation.
And when the foreign troops were finally withdrawn,
what would happen to the people who collaborated with the
occupation?
What makes us think that Iraqi collaborator will be
treated any differently?
Thousands who worked for the occupiers will leave
after U.S. troops are withdrawn.
It will be said that these Iraqis served us well
and we cannot abandon them to death
at the hands of whoever takes power after we leave.
Those who cannot leave or who choose not to leave
will be mostly removed from political power.
If they were elected officials, they will not be re-elected.
If they were appointed, they will not be re-appointed.
Many former collaborators will be forced into retirement.
Some will be put in prison by the new judicial system
that emerges after occupation.
And many will simply disappear because killing them secretly
is much easier than putting them on trial for betraying their people.
2. MUTUAL GENOCIDE WILL INCREASE BEFORE IT DECREASES
Because of the irrational hatreds among the various
factions of Iraq,
there will be more sectarian killing
immediately after the
withdrawal of U.S. troops.
There does not seem to be any way to avoid this. Hiring
Arabic-speaking peace-keepers is one possibility,
but now this does not seem very likely,
since there is no strong central government to direct the peace-keepers.
Each person in any government
might want to use the hired Arabic-speaking 'peace-keepers' to support his or her own
tribal group
rather than using such troops to enforce laws even-handedly.
Under the U.S. occupation, the U.S. government
decided
which people would be killed and which people would be spared.
U.S. troops were not taking direction from the puppet Iraq government.
But once the occupying forces are gone,
there will be no clear way to direct
what will remain of the forces of law-and-order.
The local police are often armed private armies,
who are more loyal to their own group than to the country.
They will fight and die for their own tribal group,
but will they sacrifice themselves for the central government?
In 2014, a new group of fighters emerged—ISIS—
which stands for Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
They are attempting to take over as much territory as possible,
which they will rule by means of their own version of Islamic law.
Without putting U.S. boots on the ground once again,
the USA is providing air-support to kill these militants
wherever they are massed in large enough groups.
Is this the beginning of a new intervention by the USA?
3. NOT WANTING TO MAKE MATTERS WORSE
We have heard the expression:
"We created the problem, so we need to fix it."
It is certainly true that the short war to overthrow the government of
Iraq
was created by the United States of America (and a few allies).
And we would naturally want to avoid any more unnecessary loss of life.
But there is no option that
includes no further loss of life.
Thousands more people will die.
The only question is: Which people will die?
And who will kill them?
After 8 years, 4500 members of the U.S. military have died in Iraq.
The U.S. taxpayers spent billions of dollars in Iraq
in a futile attempt to create or maintain law-and-order.
In the immediate aftermath of the American
occupation,
tribal violence will increase.
How long will ethnic killing continue?
But eventually the most reasonable people of Iraq
will see the futility of killing one another
in their attempts to punish the other groups
and establish themselves as the ruling power of Iraq.
The most violent Muslims will kill each other off.
When that violent segment of the population is dead,
then the remaining people will attempt to create some kind of peace
among the various factions of Iraq.
In short, there is probably no way that we can
prevent
things
from getting worse before they get better. Delaying our departure would
not have made the situation better.
Perhaps we could not make things better
because we were more part
of the problem than part
of the solution.
The best we could do was stop being part of the problem.
And now Iraq will be forced to settle its own internal affairs.
4. PRIVATE ARMIES CLASH BY NIGHT
Iraq has basically no central government.
The American occupiers tried to establish some central authority,
but the government is not trusted by the people.
And the people of Iraq will have even less trust in
whatever government remains after the U.S. troops are withdrawn.
As said before, thousands of the collaborators will leave Iraq
when their main protectors—U.S.
soldiers—are
finally gone.
How many of the former collaborators will flee?
And how many will be killed?
The military forces most trusted by the people of
Iraq
are the dozens of private armies made up of young men
who patrol the streets of various parts of Baghdad and other major
cities.
These private armies are identified with particular tribes of Iraq.
Their job is to protect members of their own tribes from
rival tribes and armies.
Some of the same men who are employed
by the
American
taxpayers during the day
to be members of the central police and the army
by night serve their own tribal groups.
And once those one-hundred-dollar bills stop coming from us,
they will serve only their own tribal group —where
their real loyalty lies.
The occupation government of Iraq
made a few feeble attempts to disarm the private, tribal armies.
But since each member of the occupation government
was also a member of a tribal group,
such efforts were doomed to failure.
Why would private armies give up their weapons?
Why would they disband their organizations?
Perhaps this could happen after a few years of law-and-order
created by a strong central government.
If and when there is a police
force that everyone can trust,
only then will the private armies become irrelevant.
When the people of Iraq can trust the central government,
then they will stop supporting their local militias.
But this will likely happen only after several years of peace.
Immediately after the end of American occupation,
the people of Iraq will feel a need for protection from other factions
more strongly than ever before.
This might be compared to the situation in Northern
Ireland.
Protestant and Catholic groups kept their private armies
until a few years of peace showed that they were no longer needed.
The central government of Northern Ireland
was able to enforce law-and-order without regard to religious identity.
How long will that take in Iraq?
Tribal peace can only emerge after tribal thinking subsides.
In the early years after occupation,
many Iraqis will still think in terms of their own tribal identity.
Whenever anyone is taken away by the police or the military,
the members of their own families and tribes
will think first that this is an offense against their own group.
Law-enforcement will be understood as an extension of tribal tensions.
Whenever a member of my group
is taken away,
this will be understood as discrimination against my group
rather than because he or she actually committed a crime.
The private armies of the various tribes will set up
roadblocks
to protect their own areas of the major cities.
And occasionally they will have actual warfare between different armies
when they must use force to establish their safe borders.
Which blocks of this city belong to my group
and which blocks belong to yours?
There will be major conflicts over the oil-rich
areas of Iraq.
Because Iraq is a country without taxes and taxpayers,
whoever controls the oil, controls the money.
Tribal thinking will never be able to share the oil-money fairly.
So private armies will have to guard whatever oil-facilities
they can grab and hold.
Such fighting over oil will disrupt the flow of oil
from Iraq to the rest of the world
for a number of years after the end of American occupation.
Whatever temporary systems of oil-production and
distribution emerge
might become the permanent lines of political division of Iraq.
Unless one tribe proves strong enough to rule all of Iraq,
the larger country is likely to be divided along sectarian lines.
Each tribe with enough warriors will be able to control some defined
territory.
And they will attempt to sell their oil to the rest of the world
in order to keep their tribe alive.
Perhaps more than a decade after the withdrawal of
U.S. troops,
the various parts of the new Iraq will see the wisdom of cooperation.
For example, it will always be easier to ship oil by pipeline rather
than trucks.
And pipelines can only operate
when there is law-and-order in the land where the oil flows.
5. IRAQ WILL DIVIDE BEFORE IT RE-UNITES
The United States of America has now spend 4
trillion dollars and 4,500 lives
attempting to support the central government of Iraq.
But there is little to show for this 8 years of effort.
It now seems most likely that the unified state
called Iraq
will cease to exist for all practical purposes after the U.S. troops
leave.
There is just not enough sense of national identity
for the young men and women of Iraq to sacrifice their lives
in the name of the central government of Iraq.
They would rather defend to the death their own
tribal groups.
When the U.S. taxpayers stop paying for the military forces of Iraq,
they will retreat to their own tribal enclaves,
where they can defend their own families
from the other armed groups in Iraq
There will be some actual fighting over oil revenues,
which might mean battling armies trying to take over the oil fields.
Whoever controls the flow of oil, controls the money of Iraq.
The Iraqis do not pay taxes to support their government or their
military.
All of that money comes from U.S. taxpapers
and from the sale of oil.
After the U.S. troops are gone,
some parts of Iraq will be cut off from oil revenues.
And they will have to establish some form of taxation
in order to support whatever government services they want.
Because our presence has made everyone in Iraq takes
sides,
there will be strong ethnic divisions immediately after occupation.
And it will probably take a few decades of going-it-alone
before the various parts of present-day Iraq
will see some benefits of cooperating once again.
And eventually this might lead to a re-unified Iraq —or
at least some larger geographical areas
than will appear immediately after the end of occupation.
6. CONCLUSION
The affirmation that we made the problems so we
must
fix them
will finally be abandoned by the USA.
We were such a deep part of the continuing
problems of
Iraq
that we were doing more harm
than good by
continuing
to occupy that country.
Withdrawing will be followed by thousands of deaths.
But staying might have caused even more deaths.
We had to withdraw and allow the Iraqis who decide
to
remain
to fight it out among themselves
and to establish whatever law-and-order will emerge without U.S. troops.
We might wish we could help Iraq to solve its internal problems
(in large part created by us),
but we were more a part
of those problems
than a part of the solutions
the Iraqis will ultimately create for
themselves.
Created
March 22, 2008; Revised 3-28-2008; 4-20-2008; 7-23-2008; 5-8-2010;
6-12-2011; 12-2-2011; 12-22-2011; 6-13-2012;
8-13-2014; 1-24-2015;
AUTHOR:
James Park is an independent existential philosopher,
living and writing in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Much more will be learned about him from his website: James
Leonard Park—Free
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